As Calvinus is developing WW1 Gold, why not consider afterwards a GI gold ??
It could be a stepping stone to a future GI 2, but keeping basically the same game engine, units, map, rules, etc as the original. The "only" improved features, IMHO, could be:
- Some tweaks for increased stability and compatibility with Vista/7
- Some reported bugs corrected
- The incorporation of the "official" mod
- The streamlining of playing just one nation (we can already do it, but events of AI controlled nations should stop showing and asking for player intervention, as an option)
- The ability to play stratagems, react to events, etc. with the game paused - More player feedback (more tooltips...), auto-pausing after a battle, battle reports...
- A proper tutorial

It is not Luca to convince (although some work should go into this) but his wife ... and I have never seen a foreign man convince a Sicilian lady

More seriously, it could be somewhat easier to "convert" the game on an AGEOD engine... map and artworks could be easily recycled, the existing construction module works and we have multifaction play available with VGN...

PhilThib wrote:It is not Luca to convince (although some work should go into this) but his wife ... and I have never seen a foreign man convince a Sicilian lady

More seriously, it could be somewhat easier to "convert" the game on an AGEOD engine... map and artworks could be easily recycled, the existing construction module works and we have multifaction play available with VGN...

Well, you will really need to expand a bit the AGE engine to do everything you could do on GI ... but why not?...

EDITED: OH MY! this is my post 2000! ompom:

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."Napoleon Bonaparte

Well, I am happy that my suggestion is at least getting some attention

PhilThib wrote:It is not Luca to convince (although some work should go into this) but his wife ... and I have never seen a foreign man convince a Sicilian lady

More seriously, it could be somewhat easier to "convert" the game on an AGEOD engine... map and artworks could be easily recycled, the existing construction module works and we have multifaction play available with VGN...

Well, Phil, of course I would like to see GI in a AGEOD engine. But I seem to have read somewhere that even the code language of the AGEOD engine and Calvinus's are different, so surely what you are referring must be a GI 2 or something similar. And you yourself implied more than once that this eventual project required some factors, namely financing, volunteer team, programmer team, etc, that simply were not available, so this at best is a long term "dream", no ?

Now, a "GI gold" seems a lot easier to achieve. Let's see if I can convince the Calvinus famiglia:

- Professional pride: It would be a way to at least come close to finally delivering the game that ought to have been delivered back in 2005 but wasn't.
- Financial reward: Calvinus has stated more than once his ongoing willness to correct some bugs in GI when/if he gets time (IIRC, some crashes, the diminishing population, faith points...). If the work involved was connected to the release of a gold version, at least some financial compensation would ensue.
- Ageod "prestige" and marketing: It would be a good strategy to rekindle interest in a game covering the dark ages and would attract more potential buyers, not only to future games but also for the current ones.
- It is not a lot of work : Of this I am not that sure, as I do not understand nada about programming, but at least to me it seems so: The engine, map, rules, events, stratagems, units, etc, would be exactly the existing ones. Stability and compatibility problems could be trickier but the experience gained in WW1 could be used. The rest seem simple things: more options for issuing orders (stratagems, specially) while paused; AI taking care of all decisions of the nations not directly controlled by the player, if he so chooses (no more annoying decisions about Ostrogoths accepting peace or not while I wish to play just as Britons ); more feedback: more tooltips, specially on the tutorial, covering some obscure things (like the misterious ageing of hordes :bonk , and if possible a better log. And you even have available a good and fat manual: you just have to remove the word beta and correct some minor mistakes .
- It would be useful work: if GI 2 is undertaken, a revision of the manual, rules, events, stratagems etc of GI would have to be done anyway
- ... and everybody does it: even you . After all, many of this arguments are probably the same ones that led to the decision of developing a WW1 "gold", after all...

Franciscus wrote:Now, a "GI gold" seems a lot easier to achieve. Let's see if I can convince the Calvinus famiglia:

- Professional pride: It would be a way to at least come close to finally delivering the game that ought to have been delivered back in 2005 but wasn't.- Financial reward: Calvinus has stated more than once his ongoing willness to correct some bugs in GI when/if he gets time (IIRC, some crashes, the diminishing population, faith points...). If the work involved was connected to the release of a gold version, at least some financial compensation would ensue.- Ageod "prestige" and marketing: It would be a good strategy to rekindle interest in a game covering the dark ages and would attract more potential buyers, not only to future games but also for the current ones.- It is not a lot of work : Of this I am not that sure, as I do not understand nada about programming, but at least to me it seems so: The engine, map, rules, events, stratagems, units, etc, would be exactly the existing ones. Stability and compatibility problems could be trickier but the experience gained in WW1 could be used. The rest seem simple things: more options for issuing orders (stratagems, specially) while paused; AI taking care of all decisions of the nations not directly controlled by the player, if he so chooses (no more annoying decisions about Ostrogoths accepting peace or not while I wish to play just as Britons ); more feedback: more tooltips, specially on the tutorial, covering some obscure things (like the misterious ageing of hordes :bonk , and if possible a better log. And you even have available a good and fat manual: you just have to remove the word beta and correct some minor mistakes .- It would be useful work: if GI 2 is undertaken, a revision of the manual, rules, events, stratagems etc of GI would have to be done anyway- ... and everybody does it: even you . After all, many of this arguments are probably the same ones that led to the decision of developing a WW1 "gold", after all...

Regards

Obviously, I do not have the code of the GI engine... but I think that (what I put in bold) is probably the most difficult task of all that you listed in there.Bringing the engine to today's standards is a very complex work... specially an old engine that has been in the works for a long time... (I do not remember exactly when calvinus started working on that engine, but it was waaaaay back).On the other side, like you said, the good thing is that now, calvinus has all the extra experience of WWI ... so maybe that helps...

Franciscus wrote:(PS: Congratulations, Generalisimo :thumbsup

Thanks!

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."Napoleon Bonaparte

I personally don't see much of a reason to transition to AGEOD's engine, since, frankly, the Europa Universalis-like gameplay of Great Invasions makes a lot more sense to me in a game where you play whole nations than a turn-based system, plus, well, the only things wrong with this game are rampant bugs.

I was thinking the other day, that perhaps one of the fixes which MIGHT fit with the engine, would be that Barbarians would be much more like Raiders in terms that they would not gain control of a province they enter.
At least, not until they settle all of their hordes, which should trigger a switch making their units capture provinces like normal.

Of course, unlike Raiders, they would not be automaticaly in war with anyone ie. they would not attrite to oblivion automatically.

What would be needed, beside coding the above, is an AI adjustment, so it learns to march toward the historical regions, declaring wars on the way (still present to a large degree), and keeping military units tight with the horde, and an evaluation ability to see when it is wiser to settle the horde (ahistorical settling lands > total anihilation)